Right. The thesis here is that because iPad sales are down, Apple is going to look to services to make money instead. Despite the fact that sales of Macs and iPhones are up nicely. Hey, come on, it’s not a Ph.D. thesis. It’s just your run-of-the-mill escaped-from-a-zoo-and-going-on-a-wild-rampage-against-logic thesis.

Apple has acquired book recommendation service BookLamp, and it’s expected to close a deal to buy podcast app Swell, possible signs that Apple’s smartphone and tablet sales are expected to level off.

Hmm. Apple’s smartphone sales are going to level off. Hmm. The smartphone sales that were up 13 percent last quarter. Those smartphone sales.

Quarterly tablet sales have already fallen, according to NPD Research, forcing Apple to explore revenue streams from products other than hardware, according to Jon Swartz, USA Today’s San Francisco bureau chief.

“Jon, it’s Althea. Apple did something and we need you to say something about it.”

With Apple’s Booklamp purchase, which was estimated at between $10 million and $15 million, the tech giant acquires book analytics that could improve its existing iBook search functions and recommendations.

iPad sales are down, so Apple’s just going to try to sell books now. On the iPad. It’s complicated.

Apple’s recent buying spree amounts to an admission from the tech giant, under the auspices of Tim Cook, that it should no longer insist on developing new technology on its own, according to Swartz.

Do you have to be wrong to talk about Apple on CNBC or is it just that they only know people who are wrong about Apple?

“It’s decided it’s not going to invent everything.”

Haven’t you heard? Apple never invented anything.

“It’s going to acquire companies that are good and useful to it … They realize they can’t do it all themselves, and they have to reach out to others and just bring them in house,” Swartz told CNBC.

Which, of course, Apple has never done before and this is totally brand new and you can get CNBC to quote you on that theory even if there’s a gigantic mound of actual history lying around to prove you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Using your imagination

Let us move from pundits not knowing what they’re talking about in regard to the past to pundits who have no idea what they’re talking about in regard to the future.

We don’t know much of anything about Apple’s upcoming smartwatch, or even if such a thing exists.

And then that’s the last thing that makes sense for the rest of your life.

It has to be a watch.

All these other watches suck, but Apple’s watch must also be a watch because otherwise “iWatch” doesn’t make any sense and, also, it’ll totally invalidate the watches that have been made to date, which all suck.

That’s the ballgame.

A sucky ballgame that no one wants to play. But play it they must because otherwise it would mean reinventing the category and heyyyyyy, wait a minute …

OK, the Macalope has no idea what Apple’s working on. Maybe it’s exactly a watch. But it sure doesn’t have to be.

People went crazy for the Moto 360 …

No. “People” did not go crazy for it. A small collection of nerds did.

My iWatch should be MY iWatch. …any watch made mostly from a screen ought to be infinitely customizable. If I can’t choose my own watch face or download one from the App Store, Apple blew it.

If Apple doesn’t have skins, it blew it. Good luck with that.

It has to be part of a bigger connected picture.

So … it needs a big ecosystem. Apple might have one of those …

It needs a killer app—and a lot of other ones.

And an app store. Hopefully someone at Apple is jotting all this down.

It should do things for me, and make it easy for me to do things too.

Translation: I am totally running out of ideas here.

In other words, it should be nothing like the train-wreck smartwatches we’ve seen so far.

Apple can’t win without good battery life.

And lasers. It should have lasers and some boss fins. And a cup holder.

Most of the time, the iWatch should do nothing.

What if it were just a rubber band? What if it were just a rubber band and every time you felt like writing about Apple devices that don’t exist and what they must do, you could just snap yourself with the rubber band instead?

That way everyone would be happy.

Old dog practices old tricks

Anyway, it’s all moot because as John C. Dvorak says:

“The Apple iTime Is Destined to Fail” (no link because he is an admitted baiter, but tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody).

How is it possible Dvorak is a) still allowed to write about Apple and b) he does not immediately burst into flames as soon as he types the first word? Even if that word is just “if.”

If …

KABOOM!

Ah, if only we lived in a universe that was righteous and just instead of the cold, unforgiving one we really live in.

… you carefully follow the rumors for the upcoming Apple smartwatch …

You’ll go insane, just like Dvorak has.

… you’ll quickly realize flaws that may be part of the product.

Also, if you play “Stairway to Heaven” backwards, you’ll hear Jimmy Page accurately predicting the winning lotto numbers for January 2007.

I’ve said before that this Apple product won’t get much further than any other computer watch, smartwatch, or anything else.

I got a lecture from a potential buyer, who will only purchase an iTime as a replacement for the iPhone rather than an accessory. But all evidence leads me to believe this device will be an accessory.

Doing that limits the appeal to people who were promised a sleeker gadget profile, which they desperately need …

So, it’s supposed to do everything your phone does, except on your wrist. Meanwhile, we’re told daily—if not hourly—how Apple desperately needs to make a larger phone because phablets are the new hotness.

Would Apple sabotage the iPhone sales by doing this? That would surprise me. The iPhone makes too much money.

It’s not like the company’s ever sabotaged another money maker to sell something better, right?

To re-invent the iPhone as the iTime would take a lot of guts and would also confuse the average Apple user. But it’s still vital to any iTime success.

Dvorak only exists, on a quantum-mechanical level, to imagine ridiculous no-win scenarios for Apple that are bereft of logic and defy historical precedent. If only we could do something about physics.

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